Thursday July 29^th, 2010 – Port Moresby, PNG: Today Miss Digicel , Digicel staff volunteers and members of the Foursquare Church visited the ATS Community Learning Centre (CLC) as part of her involvement in community work with the PNG Red Cross.

 Just two weeks ago, 21-year old Hariesa Tau, a young lady from Gabagaba Village in the Central Province took up the title as Miss Digicel in the PNG Red Cross 2010 Miss PNG Quest.Hariesa is the only one in her family and attended various schools here in POM before joining her current employer- KK Kingston Ltd.

 Since her introduction as Miss Digicel, she has been involved in different community based initiatives that included two Cholera Awareness outreaches at Elevala in Hanuabada Village and Malaoro Market and, a visit to the Children Special School at Hohola. Today she visited the Digicel Foundation funded Community Learning Centre at ATS in POM.

During the visit, Hariesa along with the staff volunteers from both Digicel and Foursquare Church gave out a bale of clothes to children and other members of the community at ATS Settlement.

The donation of clothes to marginalized communities is part of the “Isi Learning Programme; a joint initiative between Digicel Foundation and the Foursquare Church.

The aim of the Programme is to give children from disadvantaged communities the opportunity to learn basic numeracy and literacy skills so that they can enter back into the formal education system. The Programme will run for one year and involves monitoring teams coming to visit 12 CLC’s in different settlement in POM on a two- weekly basis to help mentor the teachers and the students to ensure they can reach their maximum potential by getting feedbacks and recommending further training if need be.

In addition, the two partners will also provide assistance with teaching materials for the CLC teachers and students.

 Foursquare Church’s ‘Isi Learning Programme’ Coordinator Alphonse Bade comments:

 “We are proud to be involved with Miss Digicel’s charity work in the community and believe that this will enable her to be aware of how the ‘Isi Learning Programme’ works and also the excellent work Digicel and its partners are doing in the community”, he added.

Digicel PNG CEO, John Mangos comments:  

“As a team, Digicel is fully involved in charity work through the involvement, commitment and support of all our staff in Digicel Foundation projects .It is very encouraging to see that working as a team in partnership with the community can bring about positive change. We are proud to include Hariesa in our community activities through the work of the Digicel Foundation”, he added.

The ‘Isi Learning Programme’ had given 57 community volunteer teachers from CLC’s in 12 different settlement communities around POM a basic pre and elementary teacher training. Their training and graduation was completed over the month of July with the support of the Education department and the Department of Community Development. Over a thousand strudent will benefit from this program to enter the formal basic education.

To date the Digicel Foundation has funded 38 Community Learning Centres, 11 primary school and 16 elementary school infrastructure projects; three Mobile Health Clinics, four Meri Seif Haus projects and four Family Support Centres.